


and all the tables are turning

by mahariels



Series: all your bridges are burning [6]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: F/M, Idiots in Love, Pining, Porn with Feelings, Resolved Sexual Tension, Unresolved Romantic Tension, everyone is bad at feelings, maccready is bad at feelings, the sole survivor is bad at feelings, trapped during a storm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-27
Updated: 2015-12-03
Packaged: 2018-05-03 14:14:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5294291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mahariels/pseuds/mahariels
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The storm rolls in. The crackling green of the sky frames her dark, hunched form like some kind of fucked up halo and he almost laughs to himself, thinking of the little book of saints Knock Knock had found once in one of the tunnels. <i>Holy Lady of the Post Apocalypse, patron saint of headshots, pray for us sinners, now and in the hour of our death.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. the storm

Even though MacCready knows you can’t _really_ smell rads, his nose always fucking twitches when a storm’s about to roll in. It might be the lightning that crackles through the puke yellow clouds, that burnt singing electric tang, or it could just be that he’s finally fucking losing it after all. Either way, his spidey-sense gives them enough of a head start so that they can find cover in one of Concord's less-ruined buildings because they sure’s hell can’t make it back to Sanctuary at the rate this storm’s moving. He watches the Boss as she stands at the window of the museum, scowling out at the ominous clouds building on the horizon. Like the sheer force of her displeasure will hold it back somehow, and they can go home.

“How long do these things usually last?” she demands, and it’s questions like that when he realizes that yeah, she might walk the walk, but she has no fucking clue when it comes down to some very basic facets of Commonwealth life.

“Could be an hour,” he says from his vantage point on the battered couch, because he knows better and because if there’s a comfortable place to sit, he’s going to fucking sit, “could be all night.” He’s already set up: barricaded the door; put both of their rifles down in the corner, leaned up against a desk where he can reach ‘em easily if he’s got to. Not that it really matters. They’re both still armed. He’s fairly sure she’s got at least one knife somewhere he’s never seen it, in addition to the .45 holstered at her waist.

She slams her fist into the wall next to the window pane.

He frowns. The Boss ain’t usually given to such displays. Something’s wrong and he doesn’t know what it is, and that’s not good for a number of reasons. He’s not used to the Boss showing emotions that way and he doesn’t know how to deal with it without making it worse. But mostly, he doesn’t know why she’s so damned keen to get back to Sanctuary today, and he doesn’t like _not knowing_ things. Not knowing things gets you fucked, and not in the good way. In all of their time together, the Boss isn’t _impatient_. She’s slow and steady and inexorable, and out of everyone living there, she seems to be the only one as ambivalent about Sanctuary Hills as he does. So _something’s_ going on and he can’t fucking figure it out, and he doesn’t fucking like it.

The storm rolls in. The crackling green of the sky frames her dark, hunched form like some kind of fucked up halo and he almost laughs to himself, thinking of the little book of saints Knock Knock had found once in one of the tunnels. 

_Holy Lady of the Post Apocalypse, patron saint of headshots, pray for us sinners, now and in the hour of our death._

“Get away from the window,” he says. In the distance they can both hear the rain beginning to strike the rooftops, the sharp spatter of _pings_ drowned out by the sudden rumble of thunder.

She doesn’t turn around, but he can see her shoulders tense. He’s told her time and again that things would go better if she’d just listen to him once in a while, but trying to order the Boss around is about as easy as trying to order a rad storm not to fall, or a deathclaw to just fucking play nice. Eventually, though, as the storm envelops Concord and the geiger counter built into her Pip-Boy starts to chatter, she slams the shades shut and backs away from the window. No need to use up the limited supply of RadAway they’ve got left. 

“Might as well sit down and get used to it,” he says, “we’re going to be here a while. Oh, I know. We can play charades. Or recite poetry. Have ourselves a grand old time, eh?”

The look she turns on him is murderous (and a little sexy, if he’s being totally honest with himself) but all she says is, “ _No_.” 

Because he doesn’t value his life and because needling her into a reaction is quickly becoming one of his favorite pastimes when they’re on the road (and strangely, he doesn’t think she minds—it’s like some part of her needs the push to be able to let anything out), he says, “Oh, or truth or dare, that’s always f—fun.” They used to play it sometimes in Little Lamplight, but the dares were always the kinds of things that ended in a lost limb and the truths were honestly not that interesting, probably because they were all goddamn children.

“Kid,” she says, “you like to live dangerously, don’t you?”

“Robert Danger MacCready,” he replies cheerfully. “Danger’s my middle name.”

The Boss looks at him over the rim of her glasses, but says nothing. The only sound now is the thunder and her boots on the wooden slats of the floor. She gets tired of pacing, eventually, and sits down on the opposite end of the sofa, tugging her cap off with a sudden frustration. Beneath it, her closely cropped hair is spiked up and messy from the hat and sweat. It’s been a long day; both of them injured in varying degrees. A bullet ripped through her orange jumpsuit and grazed her arm; he’d gotten knocked down by a mutie who’d gotten a little too close. He’s not sure if his rib’s broken or not, but a stimpak’s fixed the worst of it and he’s had a hell of a lot worse anyway.

Without that stupid fucking ever-present hat, the Boss looks different. Not younger, or softer, but more like… strangely small and vulnerable. Somehow. As much as the Boss _can_ look vulnerable. He can see her eyes without the brim of the cap pulled down, almost hiding them; tired, wreathed with dark circles, the eyelashes a few shades lighter than her dark brown hair. The freckles, clustered mostly around her nose and high cheekbones. When he’d first met her, she wasn’t anything particularly fucking special, but now he feels like he knows her face as well as he knows his own hands. Fucking strange, how that works.

“I just don’t like being trapped in a small space,” she says, finally. Puts her head down in her hands. “Not being able to _leave_.”

For once, he doesn’t know what the fuck to say. He’d always felt safe in enclosed spaces himself, after Little Lamplight. A good solid roof over your head, tunnels with chokepoints where you could carefully set up defenses. That hadn’t changed, not even after what had happened to Lucy. But the Boss… he never fucking knows what’s going on in her head. He knows a little bit about where she’d come from, that she’d been frozen in a vault. She’s never said anything to him about what she went through there. He knew she’d lost her husband, the one whose ring she still wore. But this is the first time she’s ever given any indication… that’s not entirely true, he’s just a fucking _idiot_ who couldn’t put it together. The way they always camp outside if they can help it. The way she hasn’t repaired any of the walls in her home in Sanctuary, or the roof, and only joins them in the dormitory building if it’s storming.

“Don’t look at me like that,” she says. “I’m _fine_.”

And for once, he doesn’t make some kind of smart-assed comment. And he doesn’t fucking touch her, even though he feels like he should. “I know.”

They sit in silence for a long time, as the storm rages around them, that goddamn divide between them. Even though she isn’t moving, he’s hyper fucking aware of her, the way all of her muscles are tensed hard. The tendon in her neck straining. It’s so different from the way she looks when they’re headed into a firefight—then, she’s relaxed, loose, commanding. Here, he feels like if he pushed her the wrong way she’d shatter. But he can’t do _nothing_ , not after everything she’s done for him.

He reaches out and puts his hand on her arm.

Her head snaps up and he has approximately five fucking seconds to meet her eyes, dark and fathomless and strangely—angry? about to cry? who the fuck can tell?—before she’s on top of him, straddling his thighs and shoving him back against the ratty couch. The injured rib screams in protest. “Boss, what—?” he tries, but that’s all he manages to get out before her mouth slams down on his in a kiss that’s more of a bite than a touch of their lips. His nerves are on fucking _fire_ , the fight or flight response in full effect. Part of him wants to push her the fuck away, because she’s not right, not right now, but the other part of him, the worst part of him, the part that he’s been working so hard to change, can’t fucking do it. 

Not _now_.

He opens his mouth and her tongue finds his, rough, messy, sloppy. Their teeth clash and his head rings. Her hand pushes his hat away and her fingers wind through his hair, tugging his head up to meet her and he can’t fucking help it, he’s kissing her back in earnest now, learning the shape and movement of the sardonic mouth he’s watched from a distance all these fucking months. _Thought_ about like this for all these fucking months, in the dark and shameful moments he’d had to himself. 

The only sound he can hear _now_ is their breathing, ragged, gasping. The storm? A fucking afterthought.

At the best of times the Boss runs hotter than anyone else he knows, radiating body heat, and right now is no fucking exception. Even with her combat armor and his duster he’s hyper fucking aware of all of the places they’re touching, the brand of heat from her; her armor digging into his chest; her ass on his thighs, and the rest of her, thrusting against him, pushing him back against the sofa as he surges up to meet her, helplessly, against his own will. He tries to pull back again. “Boss—”

“For once in your life, Kid, could you _shut the fuck up_.”

He looks up at her. Her glasses are askew, pupils huge, her face flushed. She’s not beautiful, not like Lucy was. But she’s something fucking else, all right. “Boss…”

“Please,” she says, and he’s goddamn lost.

“Yes.” 

She’s fumbling with her combat armor now, and he tries to help, but his hands almost as fucking clumsy as she’s suddenly become, and it doesn’t help that she won’t stop kissing him. He manages to pull away, tongue tracing the bold line of her jaw, down her neck, biting hard against the tender skin in the hollow of her collarbone. Sweat and blood on his tongue. The Boss sucks in her breath and shoves him back again, and during the brief, fumbling struggle he somehow manages to push the chest piece to the floor. Even grinding against him, the sliding friction of her against his cock, her hands are yanking at his belt, pulling his pants down.

“Hold on, hold on, I’m—”

Her fingers, hot and calloused, grasp him and he can’t speak. It’s been too fucking long since anyone’s touched him but himself and she’s so fucking demanding and it’s _the Boss_ and he’s so hard it almost hurts, and he can’t do anything except let her take the lead, like they’ve been doing for all of this time. It comes too fucking naturally. A small moment of pride, that her hands falter and flex and grip again when he licks a line of kisses up her neck, to her mouth, but she takes command again easily enough. His head falls back, and it’s a goddamn struggle not to squeeze his eyes shut, to force himself not to miss a moment of this, because somehow, _somehow_ , he feels like they’re both going to regret this in the morning. 

But now? Now is different.

He manages to push her back far enough that he can unzip the baggy jumpsuit and she lets him do it, watching him with those hawk-eyes of hers. It’s like a chem reaction, the way time seems to fucking slow as he pulls and exposes her. She’s scarred all over, chest and stomach, and he traces them with his finger in a long, hot line. There’s a strange fucking pressure in his ribs when he notices that the freckles continue unbroken down her chest and onto her belly. She grinds her hips down again and that’s it, the study’s over, and he’s back to frantically pushing the jumpsuit down, exposing shoulders, breasts, stomach. But he can’t see them; everything’s a blur of lips and teeth and his hips arcing up as she tugs his pants down and he struggles to get the suit and her underclothes down around her legs.

He’s desperate to touch her, to fucking _know_ her, this unknowable, closed-off woman who somehow decided that now was the time she wanted to let him in, and she barely fucking lets him. She cuts off his frustrated growl with her lips and stills his protests when she slides onto him, wet and tight, and christ, _christ_ , it’s wrong, he shouldn’t, but he can’t help it, he’s only a fucking man, not a saint himself. He can hear himself mumbling around her mouth, half-formed curses (promises broken, of course) and pleas, “ _oh fuck, oh fuck, Boss—_ Boss—“ answered only in the frantic roll of her hips and the grip of her hands (that’s going to leave a bruise, later, she’s stronger than she looks) on his still-clothed shoulders as he strokes her with a gentle finger at the place where their bodies are joined.

When he pulls away to look at her, he still can’t fucking believe this ain’t a goddamn dream. Her glasses are somewhere on the floor, he ripped off her bra during the grappling to undress, and her shoulders are covered in the bruises he left on them earlier. Her mouth is swollen and her eyes are closed, mouth open just a bit as she fucks him (no fucking illusions about who’s fucking who, here), her hands fisting into his jacket as he lifts his hips to meet her rhythm and he fucking loves h—it, he fucking loves it. His whole fucking body’s on fire, everywhere she touches him burns. Her hands on his stomach, her mouth on his neck and his ear and his cheek. The injured rib, the pain somehow making everything else stand out even sharper.

They’re building towards something, inexorably rushing towards it, and he wants—he wants so fucking much that he doesn’t even know what _it_ is. He has her here, real and warm under his hands, demanding personality and all, her hot skin wet with sweat and pocked with scars, and it’s not enough. He’s inside of her, so fucking deep she gasps when he pushes again, and it’s not enough, and he doesn’t fucking know what _would_ be. 

“Oh,” he groans as she does something with her hips just then that’s _too fucking much_ , “stop, Boss, stop, I’m—” and even with white sparks dancing around the corners of his eyes he manages to struggle and push her away, though it’s the last fucking thing he wants. When he comes it’s sudden, hard, and on her thigh. Leaves him breathless and wiped out and he can’t fucking think for a minute, totally boneless and dumb and slightly embarrassed. He looks up to find her sitting, panting and breathless, and because he’s a fucking gentleman and she hasn’t finished yet, he pushes her onto her back.

“What are—” she starts, but when he parts her legs and his tongue slides up the line of her center she freezes and the words choke off on her tongue. “Oh,” she says instead, “ _oh_ ,” and her hips jerk up towards him as he tastes her, sweet and tart and somehow exactly like he fucking imagined it. He switches his attention to her thighs, teasing bites along them as she squirms, until she grabs his hair and pulls him back to her. He loses himself in her then, in the way she gasps when he tongues her, the way her thighs clench around his ears. He can only taste her and only smell her and only see her, in brief swatches of skin and images, her fucking chest heaving, the stretch marks and scars of her muscled stomach, the way her face looks when finally, _finally_ , she lets go and shudders. 

Somehow he’s not surprised that when she comes, it’s totally silent, a full-body shiver and a small gasp. She opens her eyes and looks up at him, crouched over her, and closes them again. He can’t make out the expression on her face, but it’s fucking breaking his heart. He can still hear the rain, gentler now.

“Boss, I—”

“Mac,” she says. It’s the first time she’s called him anything except MacCready, or Kid. “Don’t.”

He wants to say so many fucking things then and he doesn’t even know what they are. That’s never fucking stopped him before, but right now all he can do is stare down at her as she pushes him away, struggles to pull her pants and jumpsuit back on, and the words die on his fucking tongue. He turns away while she feels along the floor for her glasses. The rain is still falling and he wants to punch something. She had the right idea with the wall, earlier. “Are you—”

The Boss laughs, short and bitter. “I’m sorry, Mac. I’m… this is the first time I’ve fucked anyone in two hundred and ten years. The first time since… Just give me… give me some time, will you? Please.”

It’s the second and only time she’s said _please_ , and he doesn’t know if he wants to, or if he can. But all he says, even if he doesn’t mean it, is: “Sure, Boss.” 


	2. and what came after

He starts off the morning, before the sun rises, with a desperately needed cigarette. (Or five, but who the fuck’s counting.) But even the smoke curling from his nostrils and the brief nicotine fix don’t do anything to calm him the fuck down. Then he thinks maybe a drink might do it, but after some consideration, MacCready isn’t sure whether there’s enough alcohol in the universe up to  _that_  goddamn task. And it’s too fucking early, even considering the circumstances. 

There may’ve been times he’s killed for a drink, but this sure ain’t going to be one of them.

The woman responsible for the fucked-up churning in his stomach and the raw scratches on his back is still sleeping, curled up on the floor in the fetal position with her arm thrown across her face, like she’s trying to ward off the start of the day. ( _Or you_ , the treacherous part of his brain whispers.) Under it, peeking out from above the collar of her jumpsuit, is a dark bruise that he remembers leaving there last night, entirely too vividly. He remembers a hell of a lot of other things, too.  _Fuck_ , he fucked up. He really,  _really_  fucked up. MacCready scrubs his hand over his eyes and looks away from her. 

There’s only so long you can watch someone sleep before it starts being fucking creepy, right?

“Boss,” he says. He doesn’t fucking touch her, not this time.

She doesn’t make a noise, but he can see her eyes open. She exhales. “Yeah, I’m up.” For possibly the second time in his life, he doesn’t know what the fuck to say, but she solves that problem for him as she hauls herself up into a sitting position. “All right, Kid. Time to go.”

It doesn’t take long to break their makeshift camp; after she gets her armor back on, most of the shit she carries fits in her backpack (or the one he’s started carrying since he figured out her habit of picking up every hotplate and telephone that ain’t nailed down) and all MacCready generally brings with him on expeditions is the bare fucking minimum, namely, bullets and stimpacks. 

They walk in silence down the stairs of the Freedom Museum, the picked-clean bones of the raiders she’d killed there almost a year ago still unmoved. He’d heard the story from Garvey, back when he first visited Sanctuary; the way the Boss had burst in through the front door, systematically picked off the raiders laying them under siege, and then ended it by taking on a deathclaw solo. She’d almost lost her life (and her leg) but she’d done it. At the time it had been hard to picture the Boss, taciturn and always demanding more caps from a mark, taking on such a thankless task. But the more he gets to know her, the more he realizes she’s a study in contradictions.

It’s at least a third of the reason he’s stuck around, long after he’s worked off his 200 cap retainer.

As they leave the Museum, she looks askance at him and licks her lips, like she wants to say something. He’s waiting for it. At least they can bring it out in the open, right? But when she sees him watching her she looks away again, chewing her lower lip, and MacCready lets out the breath he’d been holding. Fuck. It wouldn’t be like the Boss to make anything easy for him, he figures, but he also feels like he’s about to crawl out of his goddamn skin in anticipation.

They start the walk back to Sanctuary. That, at least, he can do. He walks a few paces behind her, guarding her back, the rifle slung over his shoulder for now. At a good pace they’ll make it in about a few hours, maybe faster if they don't get sidetracked by raiders or ghouls or other Commonwealth impediments. He can already tell it's going to be the longest fucking few hours of his goddamn life.

They're taking the long road in to the settlement, he realizes after they've been walking for a time. It has to be a conscious decision on the Boss' part -- they've walked this road too many goddamn times before for it to be a mistake. But he still doesn't know what the fuck she's playing at. The silence isn't comfortable, not in the fucking least, but the longer they walk the more the tight line of her shoulders seems to ease, and she only looks about as angry and tightly wound as she normally does, not the fucking demon from hell ascended to the earth that had been her face after leaving Concord.

He'll take it.

"So," she says, finally. Looks at him sideways over the rim of her glasses, with her stupid fucking serious face and impassive mouth. "You lived under ground for six  _years_?"

"It wasn't so bad," he says with a shrug. Normally he wouldn't fucking talk about this. He doesn't like to think  _too_ much about Little Lamplight, what he left behind, what he's lost as a result. But anything's better than this fucking  _silence_ , and if she wants to goddamn talk about his childhood he'll talk about his goddamn childhood. "Never knew my parents, but I wandered on my own until I found the colony, and it wasn't long after I got there that Princess made the mistake of thinking she could f--  _mess_ with the order of things and I ended up as mayor, and--"

"Wait a minute," the Boss says. She stops walking, and if he didn't know her better, there's a gleam in her eyes that he might almost call  _gleeful_. "You told me you grew up in a colony full of children, but you never mentioned you were the  _mayor_ of the colony full of children."

"So I was the g-- the mayor, so what?"

"Little Mayor MacCready," she says, the corner of her mouth tilting up, "I bet you were an absolute terror." 

"Hey," he protests, "I may have been a hard-a--- _tough_ on them, but you try keeping a bunch of little kids in order and  _not dead_  for six years. It's like trying to herd cats, except if you screw up, a hell of a lot of people are going to die." It's a small point of pride, even now, that he was the longest serving mayor of Little Lamplight and that under his watch they lost fewer people than in any previous mayor's term, but he sure as fuck's not going to tell her that. She'd take it entirely the wrong way.

It's not exactly a smile, but her mouth is still doing that thing and the corners of her eyes are crinkling. "You don't strike me as the power-mad type."

"I wasn't. It wasn't anything I  _wanted_. It just sort of happened... accidentally. And then after I'd been in office a while I didn't trust anyone else to do it right." 

"How the hell do you become a mayor by accident?"

"Have a girl named Princess get elected then try to change the title of the office to 'Princess,'" MacCready retorts. "When you're ten years old it's practically a crime. They needed a leader, not a princess. The time for that idiocy was before the bombs; Little Lamplight managed just fine for a few hundred years, there was no need for...  _that_." Even now, he can't help the snarl of distaste in his voice. Old habits die hard. And it wasn't a fucking habit, it was his life. He'd lived and breathed it for almost a third of his goddamn time on this planet, and if you count what he actually  _remembered_ , even longer.

"So Princess was the mayor, but how did  _you_  get the job?" 

He thinks she's probably mocking him, but this is so much fucking better from walking in silence that he'll take it. "I punched her in the nose five minutes after she got the position." Saying it like that, it sounds stupid, petty almost. Doesn't entirely fucking convey the feeling of  _life and death_  that had driven him to challenge her, all those years ago. But he's rewarded with a snort of amusement that on any normal person would've counted as a full-body guffaw. "You laugh, but it was a big f-- a big deal."

"I agree with you," she says solemnly, though her eyes are dancing and her mouth twitches and he thinks at that moment that he'd really like to kiss her. Not that he'd risk the tentative peace they seem to have reached, finally, but  _fuck_  he'd really like to kiss her.

Luckily for MacCready, it's at that point that they're ambushed by a pack of super mutants and he can concentrate on something he actually knows how to do and do well, namely, kill people. (If you consider super mutants  _people_. For him, the jury's still out--he's certainly seen enough meat bags to feel a little goddamn ambivalent about the subject.) The Boss seems to appreciate the diversion, too, given how quickly she swings back into action. 

When it's over, he checks to make sure everything's still intact. All of his limbs and his gun seem to be in order, and the Boss is bleeding from a split lip, but otherwise seems uninjured, so that's fine. She nods in approval to him and after stripping the corpses of anything useful (not much, bloody boards and a bit of ammo), they keep walking.

"And what about you, Boss? What's the  _point_  of a lawyer, anyway?" He's read about them in some of the books they scavved in the tunnels, and seen the occasional old tape of a courtroom drama, but it doesn't entirely make sense. Why bother getting up in front of a bunch of people and  _talking_  about things when obviously the easiest way to get from Point A to Point B if you'd been wronged was just to shoot anyone who stepped too far out of line? Let alone  _paying_ someone else to talk about it. Pre-war society must have been a real fucking trip.

She snorts, waving a hand dismissively. "Talk a lot, mostly. And argue. I was in the Army, actually. Prosecuted soldiers who fucked up a little too badly for their superiors to ignore. It was a good life while it lasted, but... well. I met Nate, and then we had... we had Shaun, and the military life was no way to raise a child. We were both honorably discharged, and I had been trying to figure out what to do next when... well, when the world ended. But it doesn't matter. Whatever I did then's got no use here. Things have changed too much for those skills to actually translate."

She speaks of her life before the bombs so rarely that he's somewhat taken aback that she's told him so much now... he knew she'd been a lawyer, yeah, but never that she'd been in the Army or that she had left it because of her son. "You're doing all right for yourself though, yeah?" She's taken to life in the Commonwealth surprisingly well, considering. It's one of the things he likes so much about her, the ruthless determination not to let the world beat her down or at the very least to beat the world back. It's not hard to picture her as a soldier, though. Explains a hell of a lot, actually. 

Her laugh is a bitter one and when he looks up to meet her eye, the expression there is bleak and hopeless in a way that she can't seem to help sometimes and a way that he can't seem to fucking figure out how to dispel. "I'm still alive, yes."

"All you can ask for, yeah?"

"Yes," she replies, after a long pause. "I suppose so. Come on, Mac. Almost home."

Home. It's not really  _his_  home, nor is it hers, but it will do for now. He's just fucking glad that things seem to be back to normal, that he finally fixed whatever mistake they'd made.

At least, he'd thought he'd fixed things. 

It's not until he realizes a few days later that she's leaving him at the base and taking Hancock out on missions instead that it hits him they're not at all, and he's stuck in fucking  _Sanctuary_ without the ability to even talk to her about whatever had happened in Concord. The more time passes, and the more he thinks about it, the angrier he gets. MacCready's not used to feeling angry anymore, not really. He's used to having a problem and solving it -- whether it's by shooting someone or by just removing himself from the situation until he can figure out what to do. It's nothing personal. Just an obstacle to be removed. But right now, he's  _angry_ , and it's not like he can fucking solve this with violence.

And he sure's hell can't walk away.

" _Hancock_?" he finds himself complaining to a settler, who's trying very fucking studiously to ignore him and prune the newest patch of razorgrain. "He's probably f-- go-- d... too high to even watch her back, what does she think she's doing?" At this rate, the Boss is going to get herself killed before he can even fucking talk to her about anything, and it's going to be Hancock's fault. If anything happens to her, MacCready's going to...

The settler gives him a very calm and pitying look that makes him want to punch the guy in the fucking face just to make him stop looking like that, and says, "I'm sure she's got it figured out. And you're not giving the Mayor enough credit, really. You don't get to be a mayor without knowing what you're doing, right?"

The fucking  _Mayor_! Adding insult to injury, really. This asshole is clearly not going to be of any fucking help, so MacCready flips him the bird (it doesn't really count, Duncan would forgive him given the circumstances even if it goes against the spirit of the promise) and stalks away to go pace around the looped streets of the settlement while he waits for them to return. He's not going to fucking waste his time being left in Sanctuary! He's got caps to make and a cure to find, and the more he's not out there keeping an eye out for it, the more time is running out. And that's the only reason he's this furious, the  _only_  reason. 

By the time night falls and there's no sign of her, he's so fucking mad he could punch a hole in the wall, if he was that sort of person. 

Which he's not.

He doesn't understand why he feels this way. MacCready is good at a hell of a lot of things, in his most humble opinion, but most of them are concrete  _skills_. He can shoot. He can manage the distribution of limited resources in difficult situations. If there's a problem, he can fix it with violence or intimidation. None of those things involve figuring out why his chest feels tight and furious every time he thinks about the Boss out on the road with Hancock. It sure as hell wasn't like this with Lucy, the only other woman he's spent long amounts of time around. Everything seemed to happen naturally with Lucy: they had to leave Little Lamplight around the same time, they'd known each other for so long and been fond of each other for so long, and they'd turned to each other for comfort. She never infuriated him; she was quiet and loving and competent, and not given to taking stupid risks. She didn't challenge him, because they never disagreed about anything.

None of that explains the Boss.

As it is, he may have had a few drinks by the time the Boss and Hancock roll back in to town. Hancock's easy to ignore; as soon as he's back within the boundary walls he likes to chat with the other settlers. He ignores MacCready, who may at this point be slightly drunk and standing in a corner glaring at him, which is probably a smart thing to do, all things considered. The Boss, on the other hand, looks him up and down and her mouth twitches. "Kid," she says, hand on her hip, eyebrow raised as she takes in his sorry condition.

"Boss."

She presses her lips together in a thin line and sighs. "Come on, Mac. Follow me."

Helplessly, he follows her. He really is a fucking fool for her, when it comes down to it, and he can't even be too ashamed of it, at the moment. He's mostly just relieved they got back in one piece, despite Hancock's probable shortcomings as a bodyguard. But he doesn't have much time to consider them, because the Boss takes him around the back of her house, the one without windows and missing half of its roof, and with a shove of her hand she pushes him hard against the wall.

"You," she says, looking him straight in the eye because he's only an inch taller than her, if that, "need to calm the fuck down."

"I'm f-- I'm calm," he says, scowling at her. Not really  _at_ her. In her general direction and  _at_  the general fucking situation.

In the dark shadows of the house's wall and crumbling roof, it's hard to see her eyes, but her hand is still warm on his chest, her fingers gripping the fabric of his duster. "Mac, goddamnit, it's fine. all right? I just had some business with Hancock, yeah? It's not y--"

Never let it be said that Robert Joseph MacCready is not an idiot given to taking stupid risks, because that's the moment that his fucking autopilot brain decides it would be a great idea to lean forward and kiss her, and potential consequences be damned. She makes a surprised noise cut off by his mouth and he braces himself for the impact of her first to his chest but it doesn't fucking come. Instead, after that brief moment of hesitation, her lips part under his tongue and he can taste her so fucking clearly, the smoke of whiskey and cigarettes and the chill of the evening, and she's kissing him back, eyes slipping shut. Her armor digs hard into his chest as she leans into it, her other hand winding up to tangle sharply in his hair.

When she finally pulls back for a goddamn breath, he leans back in to kiss her again because that's too fucking long, but this time she pushes him back against the wall. "You're drunk."

"So?"

"It's not--look, we'll talk about this in the morning, yeah? You should sleep it off."

"You could sleep it off with me," he offers, pretty fucking generously, considering the circumstances.

She just rolls her eyes and takes his hand. "I don't think so, Kid. Sleep it off, and that's an order. Look. I'll even lend you my bed, because I'm that fucking nice and I don't want to see you embarrassing yourself."

When he wakes up in the morning in her bedroom with a splitting fucking headache and the bastard sun shining through the gaps in the walls just to spite him, she's asleep in the bed beside him, turned away and pressed against the wall, and he suspects that if he's fucked up about it, at the very least she may be just as bad. It's not exactly a comfort, but it's fucking something, ain't it? At the very least, it will have to fucking do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> also, i know no one probably cares but pvris' album "white noise" is pretty much a constant soundtrack for this thing.


	3. quincy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> major spoilers for the "kid in a fridge" quest/quincy and minor spoilers for maccready's personal quest (this is set after dealing w/ winlock and barnes) if that matters to you at all! also i'm fudging a few details here and there w/r/t his timeline because i feel like it fits better.

They don't talk about it in the morning, of course, which is perfectly fucking fine with MacCready, because if he had any shame, that would probably be the emotion he's feeling right now. As it is, he makes an apology scowl in Hancock's general direction, packs up his bag, and gets ready to follow the Boss out of town. There are benefits to being left behind -- he can make his own inquiries about the location of the cure without having to worry about the Boss finding out -- but he can always keep one eye out on the road, too. And that way he doesn't have to sit around in fucking Sanctuary, watching the Boss' robot butler (he still finds the fact that she has a robot butler hilarious, especially the way she goes out of her way to hide whenever she sees Codsworth coming) pick up the never ending stream of trash that blows down the Sanctuary cul de sac.

Garvey's got an errand for them of course, some fucking settlement out in the ass end of nowhere that needs their help. There's always something and part of him wants to talk to the Boss about it and ask her exactly how long they're going to be errand boys for the Minutemen. But she takes her fucking Generalship seriously, it seems, so he holds his tongue and tags along for the ride.

He's not sure of the exact date, but it's warm enough that he's comfortable enough in his duster without the need for anything else. No rain on the horizon. A good day to start travelling, at least. Their packs are heavy with packaged cooked food because they're going to be headed east on a few days' march and there's no telling where and when they'll have a chance to cook, but also mostly because both of them are fucking terrible at it. The last time the Boss tried, she managed to turn a piece of radstag into a piece of charcoal on the outside that was still totally raw and bloody on the inside. It may say something about him that he ate it anyway. And the less said about his cooking, the better.

They don't talk much at all on the initial hike out, and that's perfectly fine with him. For once, the silence isn't uncomfortable and he catches the Boss' small almost-smile at least a few times and that's good enough. It's easier traveling now than it used to be, too, because while there are still nights of camping out in the rough, they've left behind enough settlements willing to open their doors to them that sometimes they don't even have to take turns on a watch. At Greygardens and at Jamaica Plains, they can actually sleep with a goddamn roof over their heads. 

And because he's a gentleman, he doesn't mention the fact that each time, the Boss crawls into the bed with him. In the small shack in Jamaica Plains, he wakes up to find her curled tight against his back, aggressively spooning him. Imagining the look on her face if he were to say anything about it to her in the morning is enough to keep him  _very_  quiet. The settlement is very far south east, and of course when they set off the Boss wants to take a billion fucking detours to check out every possible ruined building to scav.

It's probably a bad sign that he's starting to find her singlemindedness endearing.

They're crouched at the edge of a long empty field beneath the ruined turnpike, both looking through their scopes to see whether there's anything hidden out there before committing to absolutely no fucking cover. All he can see is a lone fridge, surprisingly intact. With her fucking magpie-eye the Boss is focused on it immediately, it and the fuses and vacuum tubes she can pull from the back.

"Ever think you'd be spending most of your time sifting through trash when you were going to that fancy school of yours?" 

"Of course not," she scoffs, "but honestly, I don't mind it at all. At least we're outside and there's nothing you have to do  _afterwards_. I always hated the paperwork the most. It was such a fucking waste of  _time._ Dot all of your I's and cross all of your T's, or the boss would have your  _ass._ "

 

"I bet you were a champion filer," he says, grinning. "I bet you were  _so_ f-- so organized."

She turns the murderous look of disapproval on him and says, "Kid, you're a bigger pain in my ass than paperwork ever was."

"Ouch," he drawls, "you got me where it hurts, Boss. I'm wounded--"

They both stop dead when they hear something banging on the inside of the fridge. "I can hear you!" a high pitched voice yells, "get me  _out_  of this thing."

The Boss holds up one hand and then shoulders her rifle, moving quietly closer to the metal box. "Is someone in there?"

"Let me out!" the voice pleads.

"Who are you?" the Boss asks. It  _sounds_ like a little kid, MacCready agrees, but you can never be too fucking sure these days.

"My name is Billy -- please, I've been trapped in here so long..."

The Boss glances over her shoulder at him, and he shrugs. She seems to make the decision then, and says, "Okay, okay. I'll let you out."

"Yes! I've been stuck in here so long! Hurry up and shoot the door off!"

The Boss obliges, after moving in an attempt to avoid the ricochet. The door falls slowly to the ground, and reveals, curled up inside, a little... ghoul child. MacCready has to admit, that's a new one for him. The kid stands, wobbling a little, muttering to himself. "Ugh... my legs are so stiff... oh... wow, it's really brought out. I haven't seen the sun in so long..." He stares up at the sky, blinking in the fading daylight, his hideous little face twisted up in confusion. MacCready feels... well. Really fucking sorry for him, actually, especially after Billy turns his ruined face to beam at both of them and exclaim, "Thank you! Thank you so much!"

The Boss lets her gun down, and says, "So what's the story with you and that fridge...?" 

"It happened so long ago," Billy says, "back before everything got wrecked. When I heard the sirens, I tried to find someplace safe. When everything started to shake and fall apart, I just crawled inside, and when it got quiet again, I tried to get out, but there wasn't a handle on the inside." He stops, sniffles. If ghouls could cry, MacCready is pretty sure Billy would be sobbing right now. "I just want to go home. Can you help me? Please?"

He looks helplessly at the Boss, who nods, and MacCready is fucking relieved. Whatever else she might be, the Boss is good about shit like this. "Where did you live?"

"Quincy... but I don' t know how to get there. Everything's so different. It's all blown up... I just wanna find out what happened to my mom and dad."

"I'll take you home," the Boss says firmly.

"There better be a pot of gold at the end of this rainbow, Boss," MacCready says, because he's got a goddamn reputation to maintain, but secretly there's a warmth in his chest that's not entirely due to the fact that it's spring. The Boss has him figured out, of course, and shoots him a quick look -- not a smile, just a crinkle of the eyes, to show that she  _gets it_.

Billy chatters nonstop as they start the trek towards Quincy. While it's annoying, MacCready is willing to give the kid a break because being shut up by yourself for two hundred  _years_  is bound to make anyone a little lonely. Even the Boss wasn't  _conscious_  for most of that time, and she's fucked up about it as it is. It's not that different from dealing with Duncan, really, and chatting with Billy makes him homesick as hell. MacCready finds out in short order that Billy really, really likes baseball, is  _incredibly_  disappointed to hear that the Red Sox never got to actually play their last championship game and break the curse, and that his favorite food are Fancy Lads Snack cakes. MacCready takes one out of the pack to give to him, and the kid fucking devours it exactly like he hasn't had anything to eat in two hundred goddamn years.

"Hey, hey," MacCready says before he can catch himself, "slow down, kid, you're gonna choke."

The look on the Boss' face is priceless as she drawls, "All right there,  _dad_."

"Hey," MacCready says defensively, "it comes naturally."

He doesn't have the heart to ask what they're going to do if Billy's parents are (as is most likely) dead. He knows the Boss must have considered it, but neither of them can bear to ruin this kid's day, especially after he's been locked in a fridge for two hundred fucking years, and he's not going to be the one to bring it up. Stranger things have happened, but MacCready sure as hell ain't holding out for a miracle. In a worst case scenario, he guesses, they can always bring him back to the Slog.

They cut through Neponset Park on the way to Quincy and stop in some kind of abandoned writers' shack to give Billy's cramping legs a few minutes to recover, which is a goddamn mistake considering there's a fucking mirelurk king making its lair below the building. That's the one fucking benefit to sniping from a distance, he doesn't have to deal with the smell of these things, a bit like if a pile of salty shit was left out in the hot sun and then, for good measure, dosed liberally with rotting eggs. Billy is a good sport about hiding under a desk and not trying to do anything stupid, at least. When it's over, the Boss is bleeding from a gash on her cheek (again) but waves him off when he offers her a stimpak.

"It's not that bad. Don't waste them on me. All right, Billy," she says, "you ready to go find your parents?"

"Yeah!" he exclaims eagerly, and then stares wide-eyed at the corpses. "What  _were_  they?"

"Lurks," MacCready says, "you're gonna have a lot of learning to do, kid."

"Things have really changed," Billy replies sadly, before forcing a cheery grin onto his face. "I'm sure that when we find my parents, they'll be able to tell me all about it!"

"Yeah... that's right."

They're about to head out of the shack and get back onto the road, but they're stopped by some long-haired asshole in Gunner gear. MacCready is about to pull out his rifle again (he's not fucking panicking, of course, this guy is far out enough from Winlock and Barnes' little nest that it's possible they hadn't told 'em about MacCready yet) when the guy looks Billy up and down and says, "Cute kid. Is he for sale?"

The Boss' face sets in a totally expressionless blank which, because the Gunner doesn't know her, doesn't scare him. "Never."

"Yeah!" Billy exclaims, from behind her. "Never!"

"Get back in the shack, Billy," MacCready says, because he knows what's coming. Or at least he thinks he does. As usual, these days, he's fucking wrong.

"Your loss," the Gunner shrugs, and smiles a leering sort of smile that exposes a broken tooth. "If you change your mind, bring him to my camp."

For a woman who's not that much smaller than MacCready is (and let's be honest, he's on the small side thanks to six years of living out of the sun and eating mostly mushrooms), the Boss is surprisingly fast and very fucking strong. She's on the Gunner before he can even turn around, slamming the stock of her rifle into his face and knocking him down to the ground with a shout of surprise and dismay, his own gun falling from his hand. His nose and probably his jaw are broken; MacCready heard the vicious crack of bone before the screaming started. It's not an easy fight; the Gunner is strong, despite his surprise, but the Boss is absolutely vicious and ignores off any lucky punches he manages to land, straddling his chest and pinning him down. She slams the stock into his face, again. And again. The Gunner's screams are bubbly, gurgling gasps now. 

The Boss throws the gun aside and punches him instead.

Eventually (it seems like eventually, despite the fact that none of this has taken more than a fucking minute or two at the most) the Gunner's not even fighting back, but the Boss is still going.

It happened quickly enough that MacCready is shocked into inaction, and by the time he's moving again she's already destroyed the gunner. The face is a pulped mess and the Boss is still hitting him, the  _thunk_ of her fists dull against the wet, exposed flesh and mangled bone. Fuck, this is bad. Behind them, he can see Billy staring on in horror and that's enough to jolt him back into action; when she goes to swing again, MacCready grabs her fists and she's far gone enough that she almost slugs him, too. Her face is terrifyingly void of expression and it's not until he says, with purposeful gentleness, "Hey. Hey... Boss..." that some sign of life comes back into her eyes. 

Her face is splattered with blood (most of it's not hers, for once) and bits of bone and some goo that MacCready's preeeeetty fucking sure is brains.

"Mac," she breathes, and then looks down at the gunner. What's left of him. "Shit."

"Come on," MacCready says, "I'm pretty sure you got him, Boss. Let's, uh... wash you off."

She lets him lead her away from the corpse and wash her face with a filthy cloth and some dirty water in a carton on the desk. Rads be damned, they can't walk around with the kid and her face in that state. He does it carefully, more fucking carefully than he does most things, tracing the familiar lines of her face with the cloth and only the minimum of pressure needed to wipe away the grime. She has a strange look in her eye while he's doing it, like she's still not entirely there. " _Shit_ , Mac."

"The h-- what happened?" he says. "That wasn't like you."

Billy is peeping out from behind a pile of chairs, his eyes wide as goddamn dinner plates. 

"I..." she blinks, and looks down. "Shit. I don't know. I just couldn't let that go."

He's not fucking  _worried_ , exactly, but she's so tightly wound and controlled even in her violence that he's a little fucking worried, yeah. Thankfully, most of what they've dealt with in their travels so far hasn't involved kids. He thinks maybe the missing son thing affects her more than she's been previously willing to admit, but considering what just happened in the shack, he will be damned to the lowest goddamn circle of hell if he'll bring it up now. "Well, I think that's one child slaver that's permanently out of business," he says, with false cheer.

The Boss has her Stubborn Face on, which means trouble. "He said his  _camp._ There's more of them, and they're near by."

MacCready looks out of the shack door at the horizon, at the ruined turnpike and the shell of Quincy beneath it, shining with uneven lights, and his stomach sinks. "If I know the Gunners, they're gonna be in Quincy, Boss. They'll have people on the ground, but they'll have the heavy guns on the road up there. It's not going to be pretty."

"If you're -- you don't have to come with me," the Boss says. "I know they've got a price on your head."

"Are you kidding me, Boss? I'm not letting you walk into a f-- an ambush by yourself. Come on, you'd get killed without me and I'd never g-- forgive myself." He's almost offended on his own behalf. No, he  _is_  offended on his own behalf. There's no fucking way he'd be a coward enough to do that, despite, well, the fact that it's probably going to take a hell of a lot of ammo and luck to pull this off. He realizes, somewhat belatedly, that he's still holding her hands, his knuckles white with how hard he's gripping her fingers.

"Thank you," she says. They're still staring at each other. For a minute, he thinks she's going to kiss him but instead, she says, "What's the plan?"

All right. If that's how she wants to play it, he can do tactics. "Take it easy on the approach," he says promptly. "If we can pick anyone off of the high ground, we go for them first, because that's where the real fucking danger is. The high ground and any rooftop positions they've built up in Quincy. We pick off what we can, then we go house to house and find cover of our own. We split up and hit 'em from as many sides as we can as fast as we can. Get as high as possible, and pick them out that way. They probably don't have enough numbers to control every single building -- probably only one per even so -- so we just gotta get them out of  _enough_. And if we're not dead by that point, we take on the road itself, just like we did at the Interchange."

She's still staring at him, intent and unwavering, and finally, she says, "I like it. Let's do it."

"Are you guys... done?" a tentative voice asks from behind them. Of course they both fucking forgot about the  _kid_.

"Shit," the Boss says, and stands. "Billy, I'm... sorry you had to see that."

Billy shrugs, a little sheepishly, and says, "Um, well. Thanks. You know. For not selling me to that guy."

"We're going to get you home," she replies. "Your job will be to stay under cover and don't run around in the open, okay?"

"I can  _really_  do that."

For a moment, MacCready can't entirely figure how the fuck he ended up in this situation, cheerfully agreeing to storm a goddamn gunner fortress  _again,_ so they can make sure a ghoul child is safely returned to his parents, parents who MacCready is about 95% sure are already dead. Life has gotten really fucking strange since he took up with the Boss, but to be honest he can't really complain. The only thing that could possibly make it better would be to finally find the cure and make sure Duncan is installed safely at Sanctuary, but he'll take what he can get right now. It's a streamlined process between the two of them, now, getting ready for battle. Checking both rifles to make sure they're working properly, making sure there's enough ammo to carry them through the firefight. Making sure the secondary guns and weapons are fine. Going over the plan again, quickly and succinctly.

As they wriggle on their stomachs across the muddy approach to Quincy, MacCready wonders how this would've ended up if the Boss was a different sort of person. He imagines there must've been a hell of a lot of pre-war men and women alike who had no idea what it was like to get their hands dirty, and who wouldn't be doing this with him now. Of course, if that had been the case, she probably would've just died leaving Goodneighbor and who the hell knew where he'd be now.  _What ifs_  are a waste of fucking time, he needs to remember that.

Predictably, the fight is a goddamn shit show.

She starts it out by blowing the head off a Gunner officer holding a Fat Man and he picks off two or three of the corporals and after that, all hell breaks loose on the hurried run into Quincy.

MacCready has exactly five seconds to make sure they can stash Billy in a relatively safe location (hiding under a counter in one of the empty ruins) before both of them are off and running. She takes the east side and he goes west, hoping like hell that she doesn't get herself killed in the meantime. There's no fucking good way to fight in a place like Quincy, not on the ground. Too many places for an enemy to hide above you; too many blind spots. He picks off the turrets first, keeping on the move so that he doesn't give away his position. In the distance he can hear screams and gunshots, so that's the Boss in action. He's busy enough on his own here, having found some high ground in an abandoned bedroom to pick off some of the less well-trained privates rushing into the streets.

Soon enough (and by soon he figures that at least a couple of hours of running, shooting, and hiding have passed), though, no matter how careful he is, he's tangling with his own trouble in the form of an extremely furious woman in power armor barreling down on him.  _Fuck,_ there's a reason he prefers fighting from a distance; there's only so much you can duck behind and so many times you can lunge out from behind cover to take a pot shot at some crazy woman's head before you get slammed down onto the ground with her power first and the breath knocked out of you. 

She's about to smash his head in when there's a gunshot, a burst of blood, and her corpse topples sideways.

"Hi," says the Boss, from behind her.

"I  _love_ you," MacCready gasps, and then panics, because that's not what he meant, or at least she's going to fucking take it the wrong way because what he  _meant was that he was glad she saved his ass_ , not anything else. Luckily for him, she either didn't hear it, or has the grace to fucking ignore his idiot mouth which happens to spew horseshit all on its own volition.

"Come on," she says, "I think we've got most of them down here. Time for the road."

There's not a good way to manage it except just to make a fucking run for it. The Gunners have set up a rickety system of debris leading up to the road itself and he is reminded, again, why he  _fucking hates heights_. Whoever's up there is raining bullets back down at them, screaming something, but he can't hear it in his intense focus. Once they're up behind the fortress, they split again, a pincer movement to cut off whoever it was and hopefully take 'em by surprise. When he hears the Boss swear and the sound of a laser gun firing, he knows she's caught the attention of the Gunners' general. And now it's time for him to mop it all up, nice and easy, nice and easy...

Another fucking jackass in power armor, of course, totally unaware of him. MacCready lines up the shot, holds his breath, and fires. When he looks up, the asshole's dead and the Boss is laying on the asphalt trying to catch her breath. She's got a couple of cauterized wounds from the laser rifle, one on her arm and two on her right leg. Just some more to add to her collection. "Shit," she says, "that was a close one."

"Now we're even," he replies, and for a second she looks like she's going to say something, but thinks better of it.

"Come on," she says, taking his proffered hand and hauling herself to her feet, "let's go find Billy."

Once they've cleared out the Gunners, taking Billy Peabody back home is surprisingly simple. Even with the ruined streets, he remembers exactly where the house is and he's practically vibrating with excitement as they walk closer. "Mom? Dad? Are you there?" 

From inside the house, a woman's scratchy voice cries out, "Billy! Billy!"

Billy bursts through the door to reveal... a ruined house, kept as neatly as possible, and two well-dressed ghouls standing in the kitchen area, because  _of course_  Billy's parents are still alive and of course they're ghouls too. MacCready is fairly sure that this is the most relieved to hear that news anyone has ever been in their entire goddamn lives.

"Son," the man exclaims, "is that really you?"

"It's me! It's really me!" Billy cries, throwing himself at his mother.

"Oh my god, we thought you were dead," she says, hugging her son tightly. Again, if ghouls could cry, MacCready is pretty sure there wouldn't be a dry eye in this room. Not counting his own, of course, because he's not that goddamn soft yet... his eye just happens to itch a little, that's all. And he's scratching it.  _That's all_.

"What happened to you?" Billy is asking, "You're all burned up, like me?"

"We're ghouls, Billy," his father explains. "The radiation changed us, and it looks like it did the same thing to you."

Billy's mother grabs him in another tight hug again. "Don't worry about it, Billy. Your dad and I don't care what you look like. We still love you."

"I love you too, Mom... I've missed you guys. It's been so long..."

He notices that the Boss can't even fucking look at them, and is in fact studiously examining the toe of her boot, scratching at the floor. "Uh, we'll just be going," she says.

"Don't be ridiculous," the father insists. "Please, let me give you something for returning Billy to us, and for taking care of those...  _men_."

"He's a good kid," she replies gruffly, but at least she's still herself enough to take the fucking money.

She leads him outside, and he follows. By now, the sun is out in earnest and he's fucking exhausted, but something is bothering him. "We should go check out the terminal up on the road above," he says. "I want to make sure this was just an isolated outpost and that there aren't more of them anywhere nearby."

"Good idea," the Boss says, and he has that stupid warm feeling of satisfaction that he always does when she compliments him, or agrees that he's thought something out well. It doesn't take them long now to pick through the ruins and up the torturous lines of the junk bridges that the gunners had set up, not now that there's no covering fire and Gunner assholes rushing out from the ruins at them. He lets her take the lead (he is not, he tells himself, staring at her ass as she climbs) on the climb and as they're exploring the camp. It's pretty well-fortified, and it's not hard to see why the Minutemen were fucking slaughtered here. Goddamn, they fucked up, and it's clear from the terminal. 

Also fucking clear is just how glad MacCready is not to be a part of the Gunners anymore. Reading Clint's logs and the way he wrote about Garvey and his group. Knowing that they and the civilians they'd been protecting had been mowed down trying to run, just for being in the wrong fucking place. MacCready thinks the Minutemen shit the Boss has gotten involved in is pretty fucking stupid and basically asking for trouble, but no one who ain't done shit to anyone deserves to die like that. He doesn't often feel  _bad_  about killing people, but there are few times that he really feels  _good_  about it. This happens to be one of those times.

The Boss is reading over his shoulder, so he can't see her face, but she says, "Well, I guess this explains what happened in Quincy. Preston hasn't told me the details yet."

"He was probably too ashamed," MacCready says, shaking his head. "This is really f-- really bad."

"Well, they're gone," the Boss says, "and I'm fucking exhausted."

"Sit down on one of those mattresses," he suggests, "we're high up enough that I'm pretty sure we could see anything coming from a mile off. About as safe as we're ever going to be outside of a settlement walls."

"Sit with me, then," she says. It's not a question, so he hauls himself out of the chair and goes to sit with her. They're on the highest level of the road now, and the sun is beating down, warming his skin. He's pretty fucking exhausted, too, and it's with a groan of relief that he settles down next to her and takes the weight off of his aching feet. It's not a bad camp, really. The Gunners, for all of their faults, have made it about as homey as they could manage, with mattresses, chairs, and even storage racks for meds and chems. They both sit there in silence, soaking up the sun, and for a moment he's completely goddamn satisfied with the universe. They got the kid back to his parents, they're both alive, and it's a beautiful fucking day in the Commonwealth.

"I can't believe we pulled that off," he says, laughing at the sheer absurdity of it. An assault on a town filled with Gunners, and the high ground, only the two of them and with a kid in tow. "What a f-- what a g-- what a story."

"Couldn't've done it without you," the Boss mumbles. 

She's laying on her back, now, her hands behind her head as she looks up at the sky, a faraway look on her face. And goddamnit, he can't help but lean over and kiss her. His nose smudges her glasses lens on the way down, but she doesn't protest, just takes the neckline of his shirt in her fist and pulls him down on top of her and kisses him back with the kind of fervor and singlemindedness she turns toward every goddamn thing in her life. He could easily do this for hours, learning the way she gasps when he accidentally presses too hard against her split lip, the way her eyes slip shut eventually, like a small surrender. The way she moves underneath him.

"You sure you wanna do this here?" he asks, when they come up for air. His cock is digging into her thigh and when she slips her hand under the waist of his pants to grab it, he says, " _Nngh_."

"Not like anyone can see us from all the way down there," she says dryly, "and besides. Waste of a nice day if we  _didn't,_ really."

"Can't argue with that." Or  _won't_  argue with that, not with the way she's stroking him.

The lazy beginning turns frantic, and before he can really think about it, he's helping her unbuckle her armor and she's shoving the duster down his sides. It occurs to him then that the only time they ever did this, he was almost completely clothed and she had only undressed as much as she needed to. Of course the first time he's seeing her completely naked is on top of the fucking overpass in the middle of the goddamn day. 

"I didn't know you were so--"

"Goddamnit, Mac, could you just shut  _up_."

"I'm sensing a theme he--"

She scowls and rears up to bite his lip, and that's more than enough to shut him up right now.

Luckily, by the time they're both naked, looking at her is enough to distract him from any of his misgivings. He's crouched above her as she's laying on her back, their clothes in a jumbled mess around them, and he shakes his head as he looks at the wounds, old and new, that patchwork her wiry body. "You're a mess, you know that?"

"You like it."

"Yes," he says, tracing the line of one of the scars on her chest with his finger. It's a burst of ragged scar tissue, irregular and thick, carrying over her ribs and onto her right breast.

"Frag mine," she says. He presses his mouth over it, kissing it until she squirms and laughs breathlessly, looking furious that she's laughing even as she does it, and he probably shouldn't use the word cute to describe the Boss, but it's fucking adorable.

He kisses his way down the rest of them as she catalogs them for him. The claw marks on her ribs are from a glowing molerat that surprised her when she was trying to make her way from the Vault down to Sanctuary. The burns lancing her stomach are a collection of lasers that managed to slip in between the plates of her armor. A deep chunk missing from her thigh the result of a feral that dropped down on them while they were trying to clear a school building. The ragged mess of her knee is from the deathclaw in Concord that almost fucking killed her. She's trying to pay him back with her own hands, but not very successfully -- he's doing a very good job of being distracting. He pays great attention and goddamn  _deference_  to all of them, to the violent history of her time in the Commonwealth, the imperfections that make her up and the warmth and softness of her skin even so, until she finally uses her Boss voice on him and snaps, "Mac, get  _on_ with it."

"Give me a second," he breathes, and touches her, lightly, to find that she's  _wet_. Really, really wet. "You complain, but you like it."

"I like it, I'm just fucking  _impatient_."

"As you wish," he says, and moves forward to guide himself into her, pressing in as deep as he can go. Immediately, she wraps her legs around his waist, hissing in pain as one of the new burns grazes against him, but oh, fuck, she moves like... like nothing he can fucking describe, just like he can't describe how fucking good it feels to have her there, completely naked and open and so fucking  _close_. He's exhausted, she's exhausted, and they fuck without the urgency of that time in Concord, slow enough that he can really ... figure out what she likes. It turns out she likes pretty much everything that he does, fast or slow; she gets particularly emphatic when he teases her by stopping at the wrong moment, or pulling out just enough that she has to thrust her hips up to drag him back down.

"You bastard," she growls, frustrated.

"You know it, knockout," he says, and kisses her until she stops complaining.

He's still careful not to come inside of her. By the time they're done, both of them are limp and trembling, laying side by side on their backs.

"Shit," she says, after an interminable amount of time.

If he still had the energy to reply, he would've agreed, but instead he lies there, half-dozing in the sun, all of his limbs completely boneless and relaxed like he hasn't been in ages, when she says out of the goddamn blue, "Hey, Mac.. You know how you asked me the other day what it was like being a lawyer?"

"Yeah."

"The best part of it, at least the best part of being JAG, was just feeling so fucking  _certain_  about everything. That you're doing the right thing. Something good. It's easy to get suckered into that, you know? That feeling. That surety. Like fuck everything else, fuck it if you weren't a good person on the outside. You put on the uniform, got into the courtroom, and argued for  _something right_." The short bark of a noise again, her laugh that isn't a laugh. "I don't have that anymore. I don't have anything anymore."

"You're doing pretty f--pretty well out here, Boss." He's told her before and he'll tell her again. She may never fucking believe him, but he's not gonna goddamn lie to her, not about that. And if the treacherous part of him with absolutely no fucking survival instinct wants to tell her that she has him, well. That's his own fucking business.

"Mac," she says slowly, so fucking deliberately, "I'm living. Yes. But I'm fucked  _up_. I'm so goddamn fucked up. You saw what I did. Back there in the park. Whoever went into that vault isn't the person who came out."

_I_ like _the person who came out,_  he wants to tell her.  _Like her a hell of a lot, actually_. But that would be entirely the wrong thing to say right now and he can restrain himself. "If you weren't a different person after all of that, then I'd  _really_ be f-- worried about you, Boss," he says, instead. 

She cuts him off before he can go any further. "I'm not looking for my son. Not really."

"I don't--"

"The odds of him being alive?  _Now_? After all of this time? No. All I want -- all I'm doing -- is looking for the people who killed Nate and Shaun. And I'm going to kill every last one of them." She looks up at him, and if she was a different person he might almost call the impassive look on her face regretful. For a twenty-five year old (and honestly, even for a two hundred and thirty-five year old) her eyes look so fucking old right at that moment, fathomless and bleak. "There's nothing left of me beyond that. I can't give you what you want, Mac. Whatever it is. This is the only thing I can... the only thing I have left to give you. It's not fair. I know it." 

She's sitting up now, so he can see all of her so goddamn clearly, naked as the day she was born and practically fucking shining in the sun. The wiry muscles of her arms and legs. The freckles, the multitude of scars large and small, imperfections of the flesh and all and all. The curve of her waist and the swell of her small breasts. For a minute, watching her staring at him like he's the only thing in the goddamn world, he feels like his heart has fucking stopped. If they were different people, in some kind of alternate universe, he'd reach out to her now, he'd take her in his arms and tell her that she's wrong. Kiss her, to show her just how goddamn wrong she is. But he doesn't do those things.

"Rosa," he says, lying through his fucking teeth, "I don't need anything more."

She's watching him, still, her knees tucked up to her chest and her arms wrapped protectively around her legs. "I'm sorry, Mac."

"Don't be sorry. Da -- don't  _say_  sorry. It's fine." It's entirely the wrong fucking word, 'fine,' to use in this situation. But as always, the Boss has taken away his fucking  _vocabulary._  

She doesn't believe him and he knows it, but she gifts him the dignity at least of nodding and not arguing further. Exhales sharply. "Right. Okay. We should... get a move on." That's life in the Commonwealth, or maybe just life with the Boss -- there's always someplace else to be, somewhere else they need to go. 

"Got it, Boss." It may be a hopeless fucking cause, but that's never stopped him before. Add it to his fucking list. MacCready hauls himself to his feet, and gets ready to follow her. 

It will be enough, because it has to be enough. And that's all there is to say.


End file.
